What Is Blood Chemistry Analysis?
Blood Testing - How It Can Help Us Get To The "Root" Of Your Health Problem(s)
Blood chemistry analysis offers a deeper diagnostic picture in situations where patients have unresponsive conditions, or in patients who are interested in maintaining optimum health. Are you a patient who has gone from doctor to doctor, feeling like you’re not getting answers to your health problems? Are you tired of doctors pushing prescription drugs at you that have a list of side-effects a mile long? Do you feel like your medications are not truly fixing your health condition? You are not alone.
Our goal is to get to the root of your health problem and make the appropriate changes necessary to enable optimal healing conditions. The doctors at Health 1st Wellness & Physical Medicine are expertly trained to order and analyze a patient’s blood chemistry when the need arises.
Technological advances in laboratory testing have resulted in literally thousands of blood tests being developed that many doctors don’t even know exist. By way of example, the next time you are visiting with your primary care doctor, ask him for a nuclear magnetic resonance lipid profile and see what kind of response you get. Most doctors have never heard of it. It’s actually a simple and fairly inexpensive blood test that is now considered to provide much more critical information about your lipid levels than the typical cholesterol panel.
Certain blood tests give a “snapshot” of a patient’s health status. The advances in laboratory testing are developing so fast, it’s hard for most doctors to keep up. Our doctors attend seminars and stay apprised of new developments in blood chemistry analysis, so you benefit from the latest that technology has to offer.
The Importance Of Blood Testing
So how important are blood tests in potentially determining the cause of your pain or other health condition?
First, it is important to understand common causes of many health conditions. The toxic health effects of genetically modified foods, hormones and antibiotics given to livestock, foods that are covered with pesticides, water with toxins and heavy metals, and persistent organic pollutants in the air we breathe, have created a ripe environment for chronically ill people who generally feel bad and develop painful degenerative conditions.
Here’s a good example of this phenomenon. Did you know that there has been a link found to pesticide exposure and the development of Type 2 Diabetes? Diabetes contributes to the development of many other health conditions. So exposure to something that may seem somewhat benign can cause a ripple effect, leading to many health problems.
The combined toxins from food, water, and air sources are known as toxic load, or toxic burden. As the toxic load increases, the human body attempts to adapt with a heightened systemic immune and inflammatory response. These responses contribute to the disease processes that are so prevalent in society today: joint pain and inflammation, fibromyalgia, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity (systemic inflammation has been found to be associated with weight gain), autoimmune conditions like Rheumatoid Arthritis, Hypothyroidism, Celiac Disease, and the list goes on. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Biomarkers of Inflammation
The biomarkers of inflammation are readily measured with very specific blood tests. The immune system response to foods can be evaluated through blood tests that measure antibody reactivity to foods you eat. Other blood tests, such as C reactive protein, or erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) measures systemic inflammation. Cardiologist often use C reactive protein to determine the potential for patients having heart attacks. Not only is it one of the best predictive test for cardiovascular disease, it also measures the level of systemic inflammation. We use the test primarily to assess a patient’s level of systemic inflammation. If the C reactive protein levels are high, this may explain why a patient is not responding to treatment, whether they are taking medication or any other form of treatment such as physical therapy or chiropractic.
Systemic inflammation is not only responsible for heart disease, it also contributes to joint pain, and many other chronic conditions, including general pain and achiness throughout the body. By measuring the blood biomarkers of systemic inflammation and making specific dietary and lifestyle modifications, we are not only helping our patients with their musculoskeletal aches and pains, we are affecting their overall health and vitality. This provides a simple overview of a very complicated approach to various health conditions, but also underscores the need for a high level of knowledge and expertise in treating the underlying cause of a patient’s condition, instead of simply masking the problem with prescription drugs.